 |
| Photo: Internet, Petro and Colombian oligarch Luís Carlos Sarmiento Angulo (in suit) |
Before he won the elections there were already motives for doubting the political postures of Gustavo Petro and what a government led by him would be like. There is one year to go to the next elections to Congress and just 14 months for the first round of the presidential elections and we now see that those of us who warned about Petro, underestimated the man. He turns out to be more neoliberal than we had imagined.
There were already clear signs when he disowned the National Strike and asked for it to be called off after just one day. He made statements that he was not a socialist, which is true, though amongst his supporters, there is, as they say, no one more blind than those who do not want to see. But his oratory, which is undeniable, his style in public squares and also that his opposition was sexist (more than Petro himself) and corrupt favoured him. But the political and economic reality of the country does not change because of the rapturous applause of approval in a public square to his emotive cry “I am Gustavo Petro and I am your president.” It requires more concrete measures and a vision of the country. And Petro does not have a vision of the country, or at least he hasn’t implemented it at any stage if does have one.
There are various measures that show just how neoliberal Petro is. As part of his pension reforms Petro forces workers to make pension contributions to private brokers. Not even Duque and his finance minister Carrasquilla who wanted to privatise everything dared so much. His so-called Law of Sustainable Solidarity did not propose that. But Petro, he did. With friends like that who needs enemies? The Constitutional Court may overturn his reform.
Of course, the pension reform gives the contributor the right to choose which private insurer they will give their money to. So much democracy in Colombia! In reality there are only four companies. The largest is Porvenir, part of the Aval business group, owned by Luís Carlos Sarmiento Angulo and the other is the Antioquia Business Group (GEA) - and 80% of pension assets belong to these two groups. They decide the fate of presidents, change laws, their orders are carried out. The National Strike sought to change legislation that would have favoured them and people. According to Forbes, Sarmiento Angulo is the 362th richest man on the planet, valued at US $8 billion, and Jaime Gilinski of GEA occupies position 236 with a net worth of US $8 billion.[1] Those who find it difficult to contribute sufficient years for a pension, have to, in the meantime, give their money to such scum, as if they hadn’t enough swag as it was. The progressive Petro demands that the mother of the youth in prison as a result of the National Strike give part of the money she earns in a restaurant, cleaning rich people’s houses, cutting flowers in the Savannah of Bogotá, or some other activity, to enrich such people. With favours like that, what would it be like, if he wanted to screw us over?
The private pension business - and it should never be forgotten that it is a business - is very profitable in Colombia. Even more profitable than banks! Bertolt Brecht once said that banks were bigger thieves than those who went in to rob them. What would he make of the fund managers (AFP)? The AFP have profit rates six times those of the banks.[2] They charge various commissions for the funds under their control. These commissions are paid for by the contributing workers. Under Petro’s proposal they would get an additional US $725 million in commissions.[3] That present was from Petro using the Colombian workers' money.
It should be taken into account that, without a pension reform the AFP received administration commissions on obligatory pension contributions of US $319 million (2022) and US $297 million (2023) (bold in original).[4]
Petro gives them commissions and throws them a lifeline just when workers, the people who he likes to talk about and boasts of representing, vote with the contributions. Between 2010 and 2020, 1,389,484 affiliates left the private funds for the public ones of Colpensiones whilst only 409, 350 did so in the opposite direction. It is a rescue of large economic groups who then use those pension funds to invest wherever they want, including their own companies and subsidiaries i.e. the worker loans Luís Carlos Sarmiento of Gilinksi a sum of money in exchange for interest which will be paid as a pension (if they meet all the requirements when they request it), whilst Sarmiento invests in his own company and on many occasions celebrates contracts with the state for public works and the worker pays for them again with their taxes for works carried out with their contributions to the pension system. It is a perfect example of neoliberalism, the profits are privatised and the investments and losses are socialised.
A short while ago, in his now infamous televised Council of Ministers, Petro said that he was opposed to subsidies for the poor, that subsidies are neoliberal and that the poor waste those subsidies on beer, displaying a whole series of prejudices the rich have about the poor and wilfully ignoring the history of subsidies as social conquests.[5] There are socialist arguments to be made against subsidies and the sharing out of wealth, but these are not the arguments of Petro. He is not proposing confiscating the assets of the rich and ending poverty, rather he wants to finish off the poor.
Now, Petro has announced the elimination of the subsidy on interest rates for educational loans from ICETEX (state educational loan body) and thus increasing payments for the students who took out these loans. To make matters worse the entity defends itself by alluding to the economic situation of the country and at the same time boasting that:
ICETEX continues to offer the most favourable effective long-term interest rates in the marketplace, which range between 12.2% and a maximum of 17.2% per annum, whilst financing of higher education in the financial markets has rates of around 24%.[6]
It is worth pointing out that inflation in 2024 was 5.2% and the minimum wage increased by 9.5%. An interest rate from a state body of between 12.2% and 17.2% with inflation at 5.2% is hardly generous. This is when socialist arguments can be made against subsidies and it is free education in Colombia. The youths shouldn’t have loans and there should be no subsidies for the interest due, simply the payment shouldn’t exist. They should receive maintenance grants, but the word grant is much abused in Colombia. Grants are what they call loans and when there is something similar to a grant it comes with so many conditions that it is more akin to a contract for indentured servitude. It is also worth remembering that in the election campaign Petro promised to cancel the students’ debts. Now he shows that what he meant was he was going to stick it to them. Debt cancellation was a slip of the tongue.
Now, Petro wants to restate his “anti-neoliberal values” and once again in a public square says that if Trump puts an end to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia, he will applaud the decision. It is a demagogic stupidity from someone who has done nothing to counter the FTA. According to Petro:
If Trumps decides to finish off the FTA, I will applaud him, because then we will have to sow corn in Colombia. Then we will have to defend with greater efforts milk, eggs, chickens and even fish…
We will go back to a time when agriculture was almost the principal economic sector in Colombia.[7]
First of all, it is not true that the past was better. The problems with Colombian agriculture go way back, long before the FTA. But even if it were true, ending the FTA requires a vision of the country, not just in terms of agriculture, it requires planning and investment and the productivity of none of the products mentioned by Petro can be increased without that. Neither can national production be increased from one day to the next. Months, even years are required depending on the crop cycle or life cycle of the animals.
Petro gets basic points wrong. If the USA tears up the FTA, what will happen to milk? Not what Petro thinks will happen. Dairy imports consist mainly of powdered milk, accounting for 38.329 tonnes of the 62,220 tonnes of dairy products that entered the country in 2024. And the main exporter to Colombia was the USA, followed by countries such as Chile, Bolivia, Poland and then various European countries.[8] If the FTA is suspended or revoked maybe some of these countries will increase their exports, but even if they don’t, this is not where the problem lies and it would seem Petro is ignorant of this. As the head of the one of the largest powdered milk spray-drying companies puts it.
Up till now Colombia hasn’t had companies, except for the one traditional one in Colombia, there hasn’t been any other company committed to spray drying (bold in original) to the level that we are committed.[9]
This is just to point to one thing mentioned by Petro. Does he have a plan for this happening? No. With corn we can see that the imports started to increase a long time before the FTA came into force in 2012. Though the increase was more dramatic after the FTA. In 1992, it imported 505,902 metric tonnes and ten years later the figure reached 2,098,679 mt. In 2012, it was at 3,450,633 mt to finish at 6,529,081 mt in 2022. In the same period Colombia showed an increase in production but it couldn’t meet the needs of internal consumption and it didn’t increase it at the same rate as its imports. In 1992, it produced 1,055,670 mt and in 2002, 1,263,544 mt, 2012, 1,872,855 mt and in 2022, 1,921,177 mt.[10]
Productivity has almost tripled between 1992 and 2022. If Trump tears up the TLC, Petro will have to find 1,450,906 extra hectares to replace imports of corn, to say nothing of the other crops.[11] Where and how quickly? With Petro, everything is improvised in his government, he has no vision, no plan and just like Trump he governs through Twitter with whatever passes through his head, no matter how stupid.
His relationships with big business and his meetings with them in the election campaign, along with his repeated declarations that he is not a socialist, but rather the Biden of Colombia, were not tall tales. The reality is that Petro is a neoliberal who was hiding in plain sight. But not anymore. His measures openly favour the Colombian oligarchy. The Colombian “left” does not like to talk about the oligarchy, and it is not because it did us all the favour of moving to Miami but rather because it makes the “left” uncomfortable to acknowledge that many of them no longer fight against that enemy.
References
[1] See (consulted on 25/02/2025)
[2] Bloomberg (16/03/2022) Fondos privados de pensión ganan 6 veces más que los bancos en Colombia.
[3] Semana (20/04/2024) Grave alerta: Reforma pensional le daría a los fondos privados $3 billones en comisiones; los afectados serían los ahorradores.
[4] El Colombiano (20/05/2024) Nueva polémica porque los fondos privados recibirán más comisiones con la reforma pensional que entró a la Cámara. Miguel Orlando Alguero.
[5] La Silla Vacía (15/02/2025) Petro, enemigo de los subsidios para los pobres. Olga L. González.
[6] Infobae (20/02/2025) Gobierno Petro le dio terribles noticias a estudiantes con créditos del Icetex: se dispararán las cuotas mensuales de sus deudas. Santiago Cifuentes Quintero.
[7] El Colombiano (21/02/2025) “Si a Trump se le ocurre acabar el TLC, yo lo aplaudo”: presidente Petro.
[8] Portal lechero (20/02/2025) COLOMBIA: Importaciones de lácteos cedieron poco terreno en 2024 y no dieron tregua a productores y consumidores.
[1] See (consulted on 25/02/2025)
[2] Bloomberg (16/03/2022) Fondos privados de pensión ganan 6 veces más que los bancos en Colombia.
[3] Semana (20/04/2024) Grave alerta: Reforma pensional le daría a los fondos privados $3 billones en comisiones; los afectados serían los ahorradores.
[4] El Colombiano (20/05/2024) Nueva polémica porque los fondos privados recibirán más comisiones con la reforma pensional que entró a la Cámara. Miguel Orlando Alguero.
[5] La Silla Vacía (15/02/2025) Petro, enemigo de los subsidios para los pobres. Olga L. González.
[6] Infobae (20/02/2025) Gobierno Petro le dio terribles noticias a estudiantes con créditos del Icetex: se dispararán las cuotas mensuales de sus deudas. Santiago Cifuentes Quintero.
[7] El Colombiano (21/02/2025) “Si a Trump se le ocurre acabar el TLC, yo lo aplaudo”: presidente Petro.
[8] Portal lechero (20/02/2025) COLOMBIA: Importaciones de lácteos cedieron poco terreno en 2024 y no dieron tregua a productores y consumidores.
[11] Own calculation based on a yield of 4,152 kilos per hectare according to FAOSTAT.rsecuted political activists who sing and end up in prison are usually accused of an endless list of crimes, some of them violent others are not. Though in reality this does not matter much. From the Spanish State to Russia they are accused of various types of crimes when the regime believes it needs to justify the repression and persecution of musicians.
The musician is like the pamphleteer of old, who instead of writing a tract to be circulated clandestinely, he writes and sings songs for the message to not only reach further but to persist for longer. And just like writers, the regimes fear them, they repress and threaten them and unfortunately in some cases they buy them off. When we talk of musicians as political prisoners we are not talking of drunks or drug users, sex offenders etc. who became famous for their misdeeds, but rather political activists who at the same time earned their bread and butter singing.
In the West the persecuted artist is usually associated with non-Western regimes such as the famous case of the feminist punk group in Russia, Pussy Riot, who protested against Putin’s regime, the closeness of the Orthodox Church to him and the homophobic legislation in force in the country. But the reality is that the persecution of artists is now as it always has been: international.
In the USA, many names stand out in the world of politically committed music, amongst them Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Guthrie travelled throughout the country singing to workers and poor farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl. His guitar was emblazoned with the slogan, “This machine kills fascists”. Seeger also carried out political campaigns and both were hounded by the FBI, with Seeger ending up in front of the Committee for Un-American Activities, like many other singers, some of them going into exile in other countries.[1] Amongst those hounded was Paul Robeson. Robeson was a giant in the music world, and in a literal sense, measuring 1.91 m, with a bass-baritone voice. In the 1950s they took his passport and banned him from leaving the USA, which forced him to carry out a concert by telephone to miners in Wales. He recorded an album of that concert Freedom Train, a reference perhaps to the Underground Railroad that escaped slaves used to flee to the north of the USA before the civil war.
When they finally gave him his passport and permission to travel, Robeson did not seek out the quiet life, but rather travelled the world singing, supporting organisations and struggles such as the Aboriginals in Australia and the Maori in New Zealand, amongst others. There is a famous video of him singing his most recognised song, Ol’ Man River and also Joe Hill, about the life of the trade unionist executed by firing by the US government in 1915. In the video Robeson goes to the building site of the Sydney Opera House and in a political act the workers downed tools to listen to him.[2] Throughout his life Robeson’s attitude to music and the struggle can be summed up in his own phrase regarding his support for the republicans in the Spanish civil war. "The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
And like him there were thousands in Latin America, from the Mejia Godoy persecuted by the Somoza dictatorship, and others such as Daniel Viglietti in Uruguay, and of course Victor Jara, jailed, tortured and executed by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Many artists in all of Latin America chose exile, as did others under the Franco dictatorship in the Spanish State and uncountable artists from the African continent such as Hugh Masekela in South Africa or Fela Kuti in Nigeria.
Today the persecution of musicians that raise their voice continues. In June 2004, the Colombian police arrested the musical group Pasajeros as they came off the stage of a concert organised by trade unions. They spent six months in detention accused of rebellion and following their release they had to go into exile.[3]
More recently there are the two emblematic cases in the Spanish State, the rappers Pablo Rivadulla Duró a.k.a Pablo Hasél and José Miguel Arenas Beltrán known by his artistic name Valtònyc. The latter’s crime was the music he composed. Nothing more. Of course, the state didn’t accuse him of composing, but rather invented a series of crimes, glorification of terrorism, advocacy of ideological hatred, incitement to violence and insults to the Spanish crown.[4] The lyrics to his songs are provocative to the fascist right in the Spanish State, but the fascists’ defence of the Francoist dictatorship does not result in anyone being convicted. Valtònyc defended himself saying:
The other case is of Pablo Hasél sentenced for similar crimes. In Hasél’s case Amnesty International, an NGO, which is rather cautious when not timid in its declarations, does not hesitate to describe the case as a blow to freedom of speech and asked the Spanish government to amend its legislation.[6]
When we talk of political prisoners we are also talking of musicians, poets, artists both in the distant past as in the modern times of the 21st Century. It is not surprising, as Bertolt Brecht the German dramatist, exiled by the Nazi regime put it “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it” i.e. the artist also struggles to change society. As the Basque poet Gabriel Celaya put it Poetry is a weapon loaded with the future.
Now, as in the past, artists continue to swell the ranks of political prisoners. Victor Jara described himself as a musical worker and as Pablo Milanés put it in his song.
Pity the singer of our time
who does not risk his strings
so as to not risk his life.
They risk their lives, they go into exile, they are murdered and they also go to jail, like the insurgents, the strikers, the youths who throw stones at the police, all those who do no not bend the knee.
[1] The Jacobin (22/11/2020) The FBI’s War on Folk Music. Alexander Billet.
[2] See.
[3] Alexandra Duque Torres (2019) Entendieron la música como una apuesta de resistencia.
[4] Público (20/02/2018) Estas son las frases y versos por los que Valtonyc irá a prisión tres años y medio. Alejandro Torrús.
[5] Público (24/02/2017) Valtonyc defiende que no hay ningún tipo de “violencia” en sus canciones. María Serrano.
[6] AI (16/02/2024) España: La sentencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos sobre el caso de Pablo Hasél, un golpe a la libertad de expresión. EUR 41/7720/2024.
The musician is like the pamphleteer of old, who instead of writing a tract to be circulated clandestinely, he writes and sings songs for the message to not only reach further but to persist for longer. And just like writers, the regimes fear them, they repress and threaten them and unfortunately in some cases they buy them off. When we talk of musicians as political prisoners we are not talking of drunks or drug users, sex offenders etc. who became famous for their misdeeds, but rather political activists who at the same time earned their bread and butter singing.
In the West the persecuted artist is usually associated with non-Western regimes such as the famous case of the feminist punk group in Russia, Pussy Riot, who protested against Putin’s regime, the closeness of the Orthodox Church to him and the homophobic legislation in force in the country. But the reality is that the persecution of artists is now as it always has been: international.
In the USA, many names stand out in the world of politically committed music, amongst them Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Guthrie travelled throughout the country singing to workers and poor farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl. His guitar was emblazoned with the slogan, “This machine kills fascists”. Seeger also carried out political campaigns and both were hounded by the FBI, with Seeger ending up in front of the Committee for Un-American Activities, like many other singers, some of them going into exile in other countries.[1] Amongst those hounded was Paul Robeson. Robeson was a giant in the music world, and in a literal sense, measuring 1.91 m, with a bass-baritone voice. In the 1950s they took his passport and banned him from leaving the USA, which forced him to carry out a concert by telephone to miners in Wales. He recorded an album of that concert Freedom Train, a reference perhaps to the Underground Railroad that escaped slaves used to flee to the north of the USA before the civil war.
When they finally gave him his passport and permission to travel, Robeson did not seek out the quiet life, but rather travelled the world singing, supporting organisations and struggles such as the Aboriginals in Australia and the Maori in New Zealand, amongst others. There is a famous video of him singing his most recognised song, Ol’ Man River and also Joe Hill, about the life of the trade unionist executed by firing by the US government in 1915. In the video Robeson goes to the building site of the Sydney Opera House and in a political act the workers downed tools to listen to him.[2] Throughout his life Robeson’s attitude to music and the struggle can be summed up in his own phrase regarding his support for the republicans in the Spanish civil war. "The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
And like him there were thousands in Latin America, from the Mejia Godoy persecuted by the Somoza dictatorship, and others such as Daniel Viglietti in Uruguay, and of course Victor Jara, jailed, tortured and executed by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Many artists in all of Latin America chose exile, as did others under the Franco dictatorship in the Spanish State and uncountable artists from the African continent such as Hugh Masekela in South Africa or Fela Kuti in Nigeria.
Today the persecution of musicians that raise their voice continues. In June 2004, the Colombian police arrested the musical group Pasajeros as they came off the stage of a concert organised by trade unions. They spent six months in detention accused of rebellion and following their release they had to go into exile.[3]
More recently there are the two emblematic cases in the Spanish State, the rappers Pablo Rivadulla Duró a.k.a Pablo Hasél and José Miguel Arenas Beltrán known by his artistic name Valtònyc. The latter’s crime was the music he composed. Nothing more. Of course, the state didn’t accuse him of composing, but rather invented a series of crimes, glorification of terrorism, advocacy of ideological hatred, incitement to violence and insults to the Spanish crown.[4] The lyrics to his songs are provocative to the fascist right in the Spanish State, but the fascists’ defence of the Francoist dictatorship does not result in anyone being convicted. Valtònyc defended himself saying:
I do not support ETA, what I am into is taking the piss out of fascists who still live in the times of Aznar and accuse women who abort of being members of ETA”. When asked about whether he regrets it, given the stiff sentence for his lyrics he insists that “in Spain the only terrorism there is, is legal terrorism, which is the fear of losing your job, that they take your house and you remain in a state of job insecurity they subject us to. I don’t advocate that, I am anti-capitalist…
Violence is parents juggling at traffic lights in order to feed their families. People of all ages queuing in soup kitchens.[5]
The other case is of Pablo Hasél sentenced for similar crimes. In Hasél’s case Amnesty International, an NGO, which is rather cautious when not timid in its declarations, does not hesitate to describe the case as a blow to freedom of speech and asked the Spanish government to amend its legislation.[6]
When we talk of political prisoners we are also talking of musicians, poets, artists both in the distant past as in the modern times of the 21st Century. It is not surprising, as Bertolt Brecht the German dramatist, exiled by the Nazi regime put it “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it” i.e. the artist also struggles to change society. As the Basque poet Gabriel Celaya put it Poetry is a weapon loaded with the future.
Now, as in the past, artists continue to swell the ranks of political prisoners. Victor Jara described himself as a musical worker and as Pablo Milanés put it in his song.
Pity the singer of our time
who does not risk his strings
so as to not risk his life.
They risk their lives, they go into exile, they are murdered and they also go to jail, like the insurgents, the strikers, the youths who throw stones at the police, all those who do no not bend the knee.
[1] The Jacobin (22/11/2020) The FBI’s War on Folk Music. Alexander Billet.
[2] See.
[3] Alexandra Duque Torres (2019) Entendieron la música como una apuesta de resistencia.
[4] Público (20/02/2018) Estas son las frases y versos por los que Valtonyc irá a prisión tres años y medio. Alejandro Torrús.
[5] Público (24/02/2017) Valtonyc defiende que no hay ningún tipo de “violencia” en sus canciones. María Serrano.
[6] AI (16/02/2024) España: La sentencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos sobre el caso de Pablo Hasél, un golpe a la libertad de expresión. EUR 41/7720/2024.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
No comments